Oh Ecuador, you started by giving me a slap in the face (figuratively, in case anyone is worried). But eventually you managed to somewhat rectify that not-so-great first impression. For that fighting spirit, I’m grateful and appreciative.

I got another straightforward border crossing under my belt, from Colombia to Ecuador. My bus set off from Popayán at 6am, got to Ipiales 9 hours later (on schedule despite a bus change in Pasto – apparently our original, direct, bus was cancelled and the original driver then tried to get us to pay the Pasto-Ipiales fare to the new driver but it turns out my Spanish is slightly better when I feel like I’m being ripped off and he wasn’t about to get away with that) but definitely broke speed limits and mountain-road-safety-precautions in the process. There was a British couple on the same bus so on arrival (unscathed), we teamed up and got on a colectivo to Rumichaca where we got our Colombian exit stamp, changed our last remaining pesos for US dollars (at the official exchange rate – I was perplexed as to how there was any financial gain for these guys) and walked across the bridge to Ecuador where we cleared immigration in barely 15 minutes. Then we got another colectivo, to Tulcan, where we booked onwards bus trips – them to Quito and me to Otavalo. And then Ecuador decided to turn on me.

The 2-hour bus ride became 3.5 and there was little helpful information to gather from fellow passengers or the driver about when/where Otavalo was coming up. Until the ticket inspector waltzed up to me (by then, I’d only enquired 3 times with no helpful responses, just a point straight onto the road ahead) and said “Otavalo, 5 minutos” (which I’ve learned can mean anything from “you have exactly 3 seconds to get off” to “we won’t actually be there for another 45min”) and was then perplexed that I hadn’t called out a stop when we, apparently, passed Otavalo 10min later. Because, in the dark, on the Pan-american highway in a country I’ve never been to, of course I’d know which stop is closest to the bus station in town (where the bus was, helpfully, not stopping). So somewhere in the vicinity of Otavalo I got dropped off at the side of a highway with the oh-so-helpful advice to get a taxi, in the misty rain and 12 degree weather. It had been 16 day-time hours on 5 different buses, I was tired and hungry and now cold and damp, it was 10pm and I still needed to find a hostel. In that moment, Ecuador was pissing me off and it’s the first time where I’ve thought how nice it would be not to be travelling alone because having had someone there for moral support would have been great. Instead, I searched alone for a taxi, showed him the address of one of the hostels in the Lonely Planet and then got dropped off at a completely different hostel 10min and $1 later. At that point, I didn’t care and paid the $13 rate for a single room (no dorms at the hostels in Otavalo – which sucked because it meant I didn’t even have strangers to help pick me back up), watched The Simpsons dubbed in Spanish and then crashed for the night.

The sun was out the next morning (thankfully!) so I went exploring, camera in hand, the best way I know to remain completely open-minded about a place. Otavalo is a market town that gets especially busy on Saturdays but I was there mid-week which I actually think turned out to work in its favour. I didn’t fall in love with the place, far from it, but it meant I got to see average daily life, the craft market with only a few tourists, the vegetable market filled with locals bargaining for their groceries and women milling about their daily routine in original indigenous clothing. Not unlike Guatemala.

I checked into another hostel at noon (one that was going to reward my boring single room with a common area with hammocks and breakfast included) and then set off for Peguche, a small village 10 minutes on the bus from Otavalo, inhabited primarily by indigenous Quichuas. The town was quiet and a random mix of half-finished concrete houses, dusty roads, colourful street graffiti and women half my size (literally. I have never felt taller. I wish I had photographic proof but people were not so welcoming of my camera) in traditional outfits. There was a beautiful 20m waterfall in the forest outside the village that was worth the 2km walk.

Next stop was Quito, a 3-hour bus ride away during which they showed a seriously violent film. At 1pm. With children on board. There was some serious misjudgement by whoever gets to pick the onboard entertainment on that bus. At an elevation of 2800m, Quito, and my lack of water consumption, caused a pounding headache for 24 hours. Unlike Medellin, I opted not to stay in gringolandia there. Instead, I stayed in old town, near the main sights and one block from the market. Quito took me by surprise – I usually prefer smaller towns but it had a good mix of sights, life, culture, day-time activities and nights out. The Jesuit church, la Compañía, decorated with enough goldleaf to pay off the country’s national debt, was incredible and very worth the entrance fee ($4, unless you tell them you’re a student but has left your student ID behind, in which case they just charge you $2. Even more worth it in that case) and there were incredible views of the city and the surrounding mountains from the basilica clocktower, the hostel terrace and from the top of the Teleferiqo, a cable car that takes you to 4100m. I did an awesome free walking tour there (where I learned that in Ecuador, lulo is called naranjilla. Cue excitement! But damn inconsistent Latin American Spanish making my life harder than it needs to be), made $1 cafe con tortillas de verde a regular breakfast expenditure (more fried stuff but the runny eggs were the best ever) and even ventured into the Ecuadorian food world of jugo de mora and encebollados mixtos (which apparently is the local hangover cure but I’m not sure I could have stomached that the morning after a night out in Quito). Because of its reputation, though (which there are unfortunately too many hostel stories that back up), I found it hard to get completely comfortable there and I was pretty consistently on my guard because even when I carry no valuables, I inevitably look like a potential target. I think the discomfort was heightened by the extreme machismo I was subjected to, though. I have had comments and whistles (and even someone throwing himself down on the ground in front of me) directed at me during the entire trip and it has been easy enough just to ignore it but in Quito it was way more intrusive and in-your-face than anywhere else which didn’t help make me feel safer walking around on my own.

In an attempt to get my travelling spirit back properly, I hatched a plan to escape to the ocean (which was vaguely recommended from someone I met way back at Casa del Ritmo in El Rodadero whose life I’m slightly envious of) but before making up my mind (other people told me that the weather was less than ideal on the coast and that Ecuador’s pacific beaches of questionable standards), I stuck with the original plan and headed south to Baños.

Baños is a lovely little place, if you like the outdoors and don’t mind being in it in the rain. It’s set next to the Tungurahua volcano (which is active at the moment, yes, but not dangerously so. Get a grip, BBC news) which made me hopeful I might finally see some lava but no such luck. Instead, there are loads of activities on offer at the many agencies around town, all competing for business for canyoning, rafting, bike rental, bridge jumping, zip-lining and chiva tours (a 3-hour tour to nearby waterfalls in an open-sided bus). I caught up with someone I met on the walking tour in Quito and it was zip-lining that was calling our names. But before we got to do that, we had to wait out the rain for 2 hours because it was pouring down all morning. Thankfully, it was very much worth the wait. There were 6 cables, 2 of which we got to do as superman and one of which we got to do upside down. I should point out to anyone new to zip-lining that only on the normal lines do you need to brake yourself. So based on previous experience, I was taking any opportunity not to be in charge of braking. Even if that meant upside down. Baños also nearly satisfied my craving for normal bread. A Danish cafe that does homemade bread, run by a crazy lady? I’ll handle any kind of craziness for normal bread! She was indeed slightly crazy that Danish lady (as the tour agency warned us when they gave us directions) but she didn’t have any homemade bread which was a bigger fault in my eyes. And then I spotted this on another bakery/cafe in the central square:

Never mind the spelling of a popular type of breakfast cereal, it turned out to be false advertising! No rye bread available. Even if their wholemeal rolls were pretty good. But they weren’t rugbrød.

The next day, I rented a bike. For $5 because that was the cheapest in town. A mountain bike with some rubbish gears but functioning brakes (I checked. A lot. Because I’d been told it was mostly downhill and I wasn’t about to test the road barriers separating me from a 300m drop down the mountainside). It was actually really good fun, despite the fact that you have to pay an entrance fee to the value of an Ecuadorian almuerzo to see each waterfall along the way and that it (of course, because this is Ecuador) started to piss it down with rain halfway through the trip. It was only 20km in total and it took me way longer than the agency said it would (but I think that’s because their estimate is based on go-pro photo stops, not normal old-skool-digital-camera photo stops because I spent ages unpacking and repacking my camera each time I wanted a photo) so I wasn’t really living up to my last name in the cycling stakes. At the last waterfall at Machay, you can catch a bus back to town but for twice the price the agency tells you it costs. I tried my best to bargain on everyone’s behalf but the not-at-all-friendly guy wasn’t budging and then he asked how much the bike rental cost and when I told him $5, he literally laughed in my face and said Ecuadorians rent them for $3 (good for them! But it’s not like I can pass for a local) and I very nearly told him to f*** off with his van and that I’d make my own way back to town. But then I remembered that that would be uphill and there was no way I’d survive that, so I settled for letting him find change for my $20 note instead of paying in change (because life is so much easier here with $10 bills. You might not actually have to run to three different shops to try to break your $20 when you want to buy something).

It was a nice few days in Baños but it still didn’t feel like Ecuador had clicked for me. So I took a gamble and headed to the ocean on an overnight bus to Guayaquil where I connected to Montañita on the Pacific coast at 5 in the morning. On arrival, at 7.30am, it rained. Surprise surprise.

Montañita is a funny place, full of expat hippie surfers who have found their paradise. It was never going to be mine but it is always nice to be by the sea and it was a good base for a bit of beach-town exploration and whale-watching and consumption of $3 fruit/yoghurt/granola works of art. Another thing that was good in Montañita? The awesome pan integral (we were talking proper wholemeal bread here) I found in one of the bakeries. I ate an entire loaf for lunch because when the sun isn’t out and swimming/sitting on the beach isn’t an attractive option, and you don’t surf, there is very little to do there. But at least that meant I finally managed to get all my photos (all 22GB of them) backed up on google drive. I hung out mostly with three lovely Danish girls who I thought were with it well beyond their 19 years and who thought no one my age backpacks so we reckoned we were probably all as mid-20s-state-of-mind as each other.

To escape the dreary cloudy weather, I did a day-tour to Isla de la Plata, aka poor man’s Galapagos, a slightly expensive day-tour ($45), especially when we nearly didn’t see any birds on the island (which the guide tried explain with ‘they are out fishing right now’ and ‘the climate has just been crazy the last few months so the population of blue-footed boobies has really shrunk dramatically’, which I reckon are textbook excuses in case any tourists question why they aren’t seeing what they were promised when they paid. After some not-great snorkelling, we set off back to Puerto Lopez, hoping to see some humpback whales along the way. Which we very nearly didn’t, until the captain changed course and went searching for some so we wouldn’t go disappointed. And then we came across one baby with its mom, which I was way too slow with my camera to capture any proof of, and then further out a group of 5, 2 kids and 3 adults, which I have partly photos of but which don’t do the sight justice. We didn’t see them jump out of the water (I’ve just had to imagine what that’d look like based on other people’s photos) but it was still so awesome being so close (within 10m) of such massive animals.

And then on my departure day, the sun came out! So I walked along the beach for an hour, swam in the crazy surf waves of the Pacific, read my book in the sunshine and finally properly felt that Ecuador was starting to treat me well. Before I caught my 5pm bus, I indulged in ceviche, yet another 80c coco ice-cream, chatted to an old British guy with no teeth called Max who will sort me out with a room at his mate’s oceanfront hostel (apparently including hot water, cold water, and as much weed as I want. Good to know) next time I’m in town. And I bought 2 loaves of that awesome $1 pan integral. Because who knows when I’ll next see such good bread again!

In non-financial terms, the cost of my beach excursion was Cuenca, a colonial city with supposedly lost of cultural activities on offer. But I had heard that it was also one of Ecuador’s main expat destinations for Americans which could only mean lots of restaurants and lots of bars I wouldn’t enjoy and can’t afford. Instead, I went overnight to Loja via Guayaquil (which despite its awfulness was suddenly my main transit point and provider of early-morning and late-night empanadas) on the shittiest bus I’ve been on so far (smelly, dirty, with disco lights in the ceiling and awful music that never got switched off, no luggage control to speak of and the worst seat on the bus (if I ever get assigned seat 4 again, I’m putting up a fight for another one. It’s right by the door so you get woken up every single time someone gets on or off. Which happens about every 20-30min all through the night. It was a long 8-hour journey) and caught a bus onwards to Vilcabamba from there (when the ticket office finally opened, after the first 3 scheduled buses were supposed to have come and gone. It was 6am though so I wasn’t exactly in a rush).

On arrival in Vilcabamba 1 1/2 hours later, it was sunny. This was a relatively new phenomenon for me so I didn’t fully trust that it wasn’t an illusion that would shatter before I even got checked in. But it turned out the place was fully booked (I’d emailed ahead to a place a bit outside town, Izhcayluma, a popular German-run hostería) so no early check-in for me. So I changed in a rush and threw some day trip essentials into my canvas bag and left my luggage (and practical footwear) at reception and set off towards town. Halfway there, I spotted the sign-posting to the start of some of the walking trails in the area and, possibly because the sun was still shining and I was feeling a bit invincible, I decided to just go on one of those. So for 3 hours I wandered around the lovely hillsides, passed through a little village (San Jose) and (because that’s how I roll) got a bit lost when I decided to detour away from the trail because I thought I knew a better way into town. I didn’t. Instead I came across a barking dog guarding the path forward and decided to back away. Far away. So far away, in fact, that it ended up taking me another hour to get to town. But there, I got a lovely cup of coffee, found a cafe that sells wholemeal rolls (thank you southern Ecuador!) and did some minor grocery shopping. This hostel doesn’t have a kitchen for guests so it’s not exciting food I’ve lived off while in Vilcabamba. The maximum you can take out of ATMs in this country (unless you locate an international bank) is $100 so I’ve been paying some ridiculous bank fees and I’ve decided I really want to avoid having to take anymore money out while I’m here. So, tight budget it is. No more drinking and only tomato/avocado sandwiches for lunch and dinner and banana sandwiches for breakfast.

The sun didn’t last though. By 3pm, it was cloudy again and it’s now 2 days later and I haven’t seen it since. Thankfully, the views are still beautiful here when it’s cloudy.

Vilcabamba is known as the valley of longevity and the place does have an awesome calmness to it which makes it hard not to feel really settled really quickly. Aside from the treks on the surrounding trails (I did a more planned one yesterday which took me through several barbed-wire fences, across the paths of horses and cows, through a dried out riverbed and up on a ridge with spectacular views), I read by the swimming pool and went to free yoga. Admittedly, my motivation for yoga came mainly from the fact that lessons are free for guests because I’m not really cut out for it (mentally nor physically).

Next stop is Peru but I’m still not entirely sure how/when I’ll get there. The hostel has a bunch of information on how to do it though (it’s German-run after all so there are some very organised folders available at reception) so I will have to read through some of that and figure out what the best option is. But I’m sure I will make it there soon. Until then, I’ll just keep enjoying Vilcabamba and its loveliness and remain thankful that I’ll be leaving the country with a much better impression than I finished Day 1 with. Ecuador has been a fighter. And I like fighters.
Today I’m listening to: Kent – ‘Vy Från Ett Luftslott’